June and July 2016

Categorising Positions by Salary Band

Location

Purpose

The Salary Profile module groups together similarly-paid roles into salary bands, record survey data and help you to stay competitive in the recruitment market.

How to use

Create salary bands as required and add the relevant positions. Record effective-from dates and tag each band with review dates:

Optionally, record results gained from internal and external salary surveys:

You can also record current market rates and statistics and compare these to actual survey results:

Affinity Help has detailed information about the data you can store in this module. Press F1 from Affinity Payroll to launch Affinity Help.

Searching Web Help

Overview

Web help contains a lot of information. Sometimes it can be hard to know where to start to get the facts you need. Luckily, there are several options.

Keyword search

Searching full or partial words and statements is a fast way to find information. Search results appear in the Search pane. Clicking a link will display the relevant topic:

Table of contents

If you’re familiar with Affinity menus and prefer to navigate a table of contents, the Contents pane is for you. In Affinity Comprehensive Web Help, sections are arranged in the same order Affinity menus. Just click to expand each section:

Section menus

These give you a preview of what a section contains without having to expand the whole section. Simply click to go straight to a sub-section or topic:

Alpha index

The alpha index is an alphabetical list of all topics contained in web help. For example, all topic headings that begin with ‘E’ can be found under E in the index:

Links

Links connect one topic to another and are found everywhere in web help. They help you jump between related topics, read supporting information and understand more about how different functions relate to one another:

For more information about pay locations (and bulk payslip messages) see Affinity Help.

Retaining Timesheet History

Location

Administrator > Company Setup

Purpose

You can tell Affinity how long to keep historic timesheets visible in the system before they are either archived or deleted whenever a pay point rolls over. Selecting the Archive timesheets option archives timesheets instead of deleting them:

Note: archiving is active from the time you enable this setting (Affinity will not go back and retrospectively archive timesheets).

145 Superannuation Report

Location

Reports > Standard Reports

Purpose

This report is automatically downloaded to your Affinity system after a payroll is processed. It can also be emailed to you (by request). It summarises both employer and employee Super contributions. It’s important because it summarises all Super contributions for the current period, month-to-date and year-to-date.

Affinity Help contains a video which provides a detailed overview of the 145 report. Press F1 anywhere in Affinity to launch Affinity Help.

How ESS Handles Applications for Leave Over-Entitlement

How it works

ESS Leave can be configured to respond differently to employees who apply for more leave than their current entitlement. This configuration is done in ESS Admin (see Did You Know February/March). This month we look at what employees experience in ESS when they apply for annual leave over entitlement. Four possible scenarios are covered, based on how leave is configured in ESS Admin.

Scenario 1: Accept (unlimited units)

In this scenario, employees can request any amount of leave, receive no warnings and are not prevented from submitting their leave application. Negative hours are shown on screen for information only:

Note: this employee’s manager can still decline his outrageous request, but the employee can still live in hope.

Scenario 2: Accept (allowed units)

Allowed units are how many units-over-entitlement an employee can apply for before their application is either accepted (with a warning) or rejected outright. In this example, we allow employees to request up to 15 hours over their entitlement, but warn them if they exceed both their entitlement and the allowed units. If the employee applies for leave-over-entitlement that still falls within the allowed 15 hours, a negative leave balance displays but no warning appears:

If the employee exceeds both their entitlement and the allowed 15 hours over-entitlement, they will be informed:

If the employee still chooses to Send For Approval then they are given the option to continue or abandon the request:

Scenario 3: Reject (no allowed units)

You can configure a leave type to reject over-entitlement applications outright, with no allowed units for your ambitious employees to take advantage of. If allowed units are configured, the employee is informed:

If the employee still tries to submit their leave request, a message appears and they are given no option but to select OK and return to the leave request:

Scenario 4: Reject (allowed units)

Where allowed units exist, the employee will first be informed that their request exceeds their balance by more than the number of allowed units:

If the employee still tries to submit their leave request, a message appears and they are given no option but to select OK and return to the leave request:

Clever Forms Elements: Link URL and Youtube Video

About Affinity Clever Forms

Affinity Clever Forms lets you create dynamic online forms complete with approval workflow. As a result, HR and payroll processes become more efficient, accurate and compliant.

About form elements

Form elements are the fields, functions and user options that you drag onto Clever Forms templates to create dynamic, meaningful forms. This month we showcase two elements which enable you to draw in external resources such as websites and videos, expanding the functionality of your form.

Link URL

Adds a link to the form allowing users to access either an internal (intranet) web page or an external website:

Youtube Video

Embeds a YouTube™ video directly into the form. Users simply click to play the video:

Tip

If your organisation has both Australian and New Zealand pay points, and you need to move an employee from one to the other, do not simply change their pay point. Create a new employee masterfile with the new pay point. This ensures that the employee’s essential balances such leave, Super/KiwiSaver and tax do not get grand-totalled on the Control Account (05/505) Report. In other words, maintaining two separate employee masterfiles ensures that the year-end figures for the respective countries are not compromised and that the correct tax is calculated.